After Queens Slashing, Many Questions and a Young Life Upended

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Jia Jia Liang, 16, with her mother at a news conference at the office of Assemblyman Ron Kim, left, in a photograph provided by Mr. Kim. Ms. Liang was slashed by an unknown assailant in December.CreditOffice of Assemblyman Ron Kim

Two scars now mark the left side of Jia Jia Liang’s young face. One begins at the top of her cheekbone under her eye and runs in a surgically precise line to her jawline. The second begins closer to her ear and runs to her jaw. As they traverse her cheek, they are as parallel and orderly as train tracks.

But then the second takes a dramatic, chilling turn, swooping down her neck and across her throat.

They were inflicted one morning in mid-December by an unknown assailant who sneaked up behind Ms. Liang, a Chinese exchange student, and sliced her with a box cutter as she was walking to school in Whitestone, Queens. It was one of a spate of seemingly random slashings that have unnerved New York City in recent months.

The attacker fled without a word, and Ms. Liang’s life changed forever.

CreditVideo by NYPD

Few people have seen the scars. Ms. Liang is 16 and wants them to go away. She covers them in 100-plus S.P.F. sunblock — which serves the dual purpose of protecting them but also obscuring them — and she wears a surgical mask when she leaves the house and is in the presence of strangers, something she has not often done since the attack on Dec. 16.

Otherwise, she is doing fine. At least, that is the impression she wanted to give during an interview this week.

Despite the attack, she said, she was committed to remaining in the United States and still intended to graduate from high school and enroll at an American college.

The encounter had not changed her view of the city or the country, she said. She did not walk through the streets bracing for another attack, even if she felt a little more vulnerable. The event had not pitched her into some sort of philosophical gyre.

“It was just an accident,” she said softly in Cantonese. “It makes me feel stronger.”

During the interview, she sat at a glass-top conference table in the office of her pro bono lawyer, Gary S. Park, in Flushing, Queens, accompanied by her mother, who had flown from China after the attack to care for her.

“She always thinks positively,” said Ms. Liang’s mother, who provided only her last name, also Liang, because, she said, she did not want to draw further attention to the family in China.

Very few people in her community of friends and colleagues knew that her daughter had been attacked, she explained. She had not even told Ms. Liang’s 9-year-old brother.

Ms. Liang wore a blue wool cap over shoulder-length dark hair, a white turtleneck shirt and, despite the warmth of the office, a dark winter coat — the lining was decorated with small white stars. She was petite and shy, her slight shoulders turned inward until she practically folded into herself.

Speaking from behind the surgical mask, she answered questions hesitantly, in short replies, usually no more than a few words, alternating between halting English and Cantonese, her native language. Her mother jumped in to answer questions for her in Cantonese, rescuing her from her awkwardness.

When Ms. Liang was asked whether she felt differently about New York, she remained silent for several seconds until her mother interjected: “She has seen many of these kinds of things happen anywhere, so it doesn’t affect her thoughts or feelings about New York.”

Ms. Liang’s mask remained on for the entire hourlong interview; she pulled it off only once to show her scars. They seemed to be healing well. The layer of sunblock dulled their redness and made them look more like creases than wounds. Quickly, the mask was back on. “I’m worried the scars will be permanent,” she said.

Neither Ms. Liang nor her mother permitted a photograph to be taken of them, even one that concealed their identity, even though they appeared last month at a news conference wearing surgical masks and sunglasses.

Ms. Liang was raised in the city of Guangzhou. Her parents are divorced — she said she had no contact with her father — and her mother works at a small business that buys and sells construction equipment and materials.

She came to New York last year to study, enrolling at the Whitestone Academy, a private school in the northern Queens neighborhood of Whitestone, hoping that it would prepare her to apply for admission to an American college. “New York is a modern city,” Ms. Liang’s mother said by way of explaining why the family chose to educate the girl in New York.

Ms. Liang, who is in the 10th grade, says most students at the school are Chinese and, like her, are planning to attend American universities. The school, founded in 1981, is in an unadorned, narrow one-story building in a mixed-use commercial and residential section of Whitestone. The property was formerly the site of a metal hose manufacturer and a company that designed heavy machinery.

A friend of Ms. Liang’s mother who lives in Whitestone allowed Ms. Liang to stay in her three-story house, in a quiet, residential area of the neighborhood just south of the Cross Island Expressway.

Her life before the attack was mainly focused on school and schoolwork. She had no hobbies, she said, though in her spare time she liked to listen to music. “Popular music,” she said without elaborating. She had made some friends at the academy, she said, and for fun they might go shopping. But the focus of her life was studying.

She said that on the day of the attack, she woke up around 7:40 a.m., her normal time. She may have eaten her usual breakfast of bread and a glass of milk — she does not recall exactly — before heading to school. As usual, she headed east along 13th Avenue.

Suddenly, Ms. Liang recalled, someone was slicing her face and then running away, and she was bleeding, in pain and in shock. She returned to the house to get help.

She never saw her attacker but knows from watching security camera videos that a man wearing a surgical mask and surgical gloves loped up from behind her as she strolled along the sun-dappled sidewalk. Apparently hearing the attacker’s footsteps, she began turning to look behind her. But the attacker was already on her, his left hand bracing her shoulder, his right hand holding the box cutter at her face. A second later, he was fleeing in the direction he had come.

The authorities have not arrested anyone in connection with the attack. In early January, the police found an anonymous, threatening letter left near the house in Whitestone suggesting that Ms. Liang was the victim of mistaken identity.

“We believe that the attack was targeting another person in that household,” said a police official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation was still open.

In the interview this week, Ms. Liang declined to reveal details about the house and who was living there. She also declined to speculate on who may have attacked her.

Mr. Park said he was helping Ms. Liang petition for a special visa that is granted to victims of serious crimes, and, under certain conditions, allows them to file for a green card. He is also administering two funds that have been set up to help raise money for Ms. Liang’s education, including an effort on GoFundMe.com.

Ms. Liang said she never considered moving to another city or returning to China, and her mother encouraged her to stay.

“I expected to be well educated in the States,” Ms. Liang said.

Her mother added, “Life is full of difficulties.”

Until this month, Ms. Liang continued to live in the house, and she and her mother mainly spent their time in the house recovering from the attack. Ms. Liang’s mother said that at times, Ms. Liang has comforted her, not the other way around. “She keeps encouraging me,” the mother said.

This week was a watershed in Ms. Liang’s recovery. She moved into a dormitory affiliated with Whitestone Academy and, on Wednesday, she resumed classes. Her mother — reluctantly, she said — flew back to China.

Correction:

An earlier version of this article misstated the given name of Ms. Liang’s lawyer. He is Gary Park, not Ken.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A22 of the New York edition with the headline: Queens Slashing Upends a Teenager’s Life. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe